Rapture. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ those fingers come up to close around her face, his heated body closing in as he leaned closer and turned her malfunctioning eyes up to his.

      “I do not consider you any of those things,” he told her carefully, “but I do expect a level of respect in my house, girl.”

      His house. So he was her new owner after all. She had suspected as much, considering the way he had spoken earlier and the haste with which the other two men had left the room.

      It didn’t matter. He could be the president of the United States for all she cared. While humans found that to be an important person, Shadowdwellers did not. This male might scare the hell out of his other servants, but she was a horse of a different color.

      She smiled.

      Then she spat in his face.

      How’s that for respect, asshole?

      She wished she could have seen it. She knew she was bleeding really badly, too, because she was constantly swallowing the stuff. Dae would have paid good money to see some aristocratic bituth amec sprayed in red spit, and here the opportunity was, completely free. Served him right anyway. What kind of idiot would lean face-to-face with her after watching her kick his lackeys’ asses all over the place? Now she was thinking she had to take that testicle shot just on principle. Then again, why blow all her tricks at once?

      “That,” he said very slowly, “was not only rude, but quite unhygienic.”

      Unhygienic? Was he kidding?

      “Yeah? I’ve also been known to pee myself on command.” She curled the less swollen side of her lip. “Might want to keep that in mind.”

      To her surprise, she heard him chuckle. And it wasn’t some snide or superior mocking laugh either, but a rather genuine, good-natured sort of thing.

      “I thank you for the warning. With consideration like that, I am certain we can work up to respect.”

      Then she felt him move to slide his hands under her back and her knees. Before she could respond, he had risen to his full height and was carrying her high against a chest made of chiseled rock. Dreading what would happen next, she tensed for any possibility. She was already in trouble, she knew, because he wasn’t the least bit afraid of her. It had taken some time, but Winifred and Friedlow had learned a healthy fear of their caged pet, and she had worked it every chance she could to keep herself reasonably safe and alive. She had no idea how she could work the same effect on a man who seemed so blasé about owning a slave who threatened to leak on him like a baby doll. Also, there was the part where she knew she weighed a good sixty-five kilos, yet he was sweeping her up without so much as a grunt of effort. The muscle closed around her in the form of his chest, astoundingly broad shoulders, and those fearfully thickly developed biceps. There was no give on him anywhere. His belly was hard and flat against her round hip, and as he crossed the floor in a crisp, booted stride, he never so much as shuffled a foot under her added weight.

      She was in big trouble. She knew it with that sinking surety she got in her gut right before the most dramatic events in her pathetic life took place. Daenaira was oriented to the room as she knew it so far, though, and she was positive he wasn’t heading back toward the bed where this had all begun. However, without knowing what else was around her in the vast room, she couldn’t say for certain if that was a good thing. She did understand that space in an underground city like this one was a scarce commodity. Once used for deep mining efforts, the caves and caverns the Shadowdweller city occupied were located in the far reaches of an Alaskan mountain range. The small sprawl of the city that existed aboveground appeared to the rest of the world as a wildlife and geographical survey post. Those buildings managed things like winter livestock and other city supplies or technology stations, all managed in a lightless environment, especially during the long, dark winters that gave her people respite from the dangers of daylight. Shadowdwellers migrated to the very edge of the Antarctic for the summer, following the darkness to a New Zealand winter that was far less harsh or dark than Alaska, but still less than eight hours of daylight in a day, which was much preferred to eighteen hours of North American summer days.

      But here in the northern city, deep in the dark, it meant an entire culture lived in a slowly developing infrastructure, making space very, very valuable. If the room they were in was truly as large as it sounded, her new “benefactor” was as wealthy as they came. A Senator, she considered, although keeping slaves wasn’t exactly politically savvy. Still, Senators were only useful in bringing the issues and needs of their people to the royals and arguing with them about progress, both for and against. But in truth, the Chancellors were the sole power of their government. Daenaira had once thought it would mean good things for their society when the twins had won the war and taken power about a decade ago. But since she had spent the past eight of those years washing clothes in captivity, she had no idea if it was working out that way. She didn’t much care either. It had been hard enough worrying about how to keep ahead of trouble on a nightly basis.

      Eventually they came to a stop and she felt him kneel to put her down on a soft surface. It was a sofa or a firm chaise, the satiny cushions sliding under her fingertips. She sat there tensely, trying to blink the persistent blindness away once and for all. It wasn’t clearing up fast enough, and she needed her vision if she was going to have to fight. And she was going to have to fight, she didn’t doubt that.

      “Do you wish to explain to me why you were fighting with the guards?” he asked as he rose to his feet and stepped out of striking distance. She saw him squat again and heard the splash of water. There was a humid dampness in the air and she suspected they were at a hot spring.

      He had a hot spring in his room? Or was it a bath? She watched him lean forward and realized he was washing his face.

      Well, the urge to run up behind him and shove him into the water was just too strong. He had completely turned his back on her—she could make out the wide width of his shoulders and the dark fabric that stretched over them—and she was a lot faster than he probably thought.

      Normally.

      Daenaira sighed, realizing she’d just make things worse if she did it. Where would she run to afterward? She didn’t have a clue where she was and where she could hide. She might as well save it for another day. She prayed there was another day to save it for. The thought made her heart race. She tested the strength of her limbs by holding herself upright and pushing her feet against the cold, smooth floor. Her new owner turned back to look at her over his shoulder, as if he could sense what she was doing and why. Dae went very still. He rose up and advanced on her, his enormous body quickly blocking out all of her vision.

      “Why were you fighting with the guards?” he asked again, lowering himself into a vulnerable crouch with his knees parting around her shins.

      Boy, is this guy stupid or what?

      She tried not to warn him with a self-satisfied smile.

      But then a gentle hand landed on her knees and a hot, damp cloth touched her face in soft, short strokes meant to cause her as little pain as possible as he cleaned her up. Dae realized his hand on her leg was just about as warm as the cloth he used. Heat was radiating from him and slipping under her skin, a swimming sensation that seemed to skip like free-flowing energy up along her nerves. She realized then that she could smell the scent of him. There was leather, from his clothing, of course, but it was more than that. He didn’t reek of sweating armpits like her uncle did, offending her sharp Shadowdweller senses, but instead there was an appealing mixture of fabrics, the detergents used to clean them, the almost sultry scent of the soap he used, and…something else. There was a chemical scent, which she thought might be sword polish, but there was also this dark, toasted СКАЧАТЬ